Interventions for Comprehension – Details:



Interventions for Comprehension – Details:

|Skill- Comprehension: Details |

|Intervention – Beat the Teacher |

|Source or adapted from - “Make It Real” by Linda Hoyt |

Materials:

books on students’ instructional level

Instructions for administration:

Beat the Teacher is a questioning activity that helps students develop strong questioning skills that can enhance their reading comprehension and can be used to check for students’ understanding of information presented in the reading. As students read the text they generate questions that they pose to the teacher in a group discussion. The activity motivates students to try to stump their teacher with their questions. Their goal is to ask a question the teacher cannot answer about the text. The activity increases student motivation to read and reread in their quest to stump the teacher, and in the process of generating challenging questions and posing them to their teacher, they must listen to and pay attention to the teacher’s answers.

To challenge students further and to create an atmosphere of competition, the activity can be modified to engage students in question answering. Every time the teacher answers a question correctly, students must answer a teacher question, and points are tallied on the board for correct answers.

|Skill- Comprehension: Details |

|Intervention – Visualizing |

|Source or adapted from - “Strategies That Work” by Stephanie Harvey and Anne Goudvis |

Materials:

Paper divided into 4 boxes

Sentence strip divided into 4-5 sections

Pencil/crayons for student

books good for visualizing (see book list on Balanced Literacy website)

Instructions for administration:

Proficient readers create a movie in their heads as they read. Reviewing this movie afterwards is what helps them to recall specific events in sequence while retelling the story. Some students do not naturally visualize as they read and must be explicitly taught how to do so. These students benefit from a teacher modeling how good readers stop periodically while reading, close their eyes, and create mental images that include what they see, hear, smell, and feel in their minds as they read. Several options for explicitly demonstrating visualizing are:

1. Read aloud a book with good descriptive passages or action sequences (see the visualizing page of the Balanced Literacy website for suggested book titles). Don’t show the student the pictures as you read. Stop after each page (or paragraph, if reading a chapter book) and demonstrate how to visualize. After several demonstrations allow the child to close his/her eyes and talk about the mental images he sees.

2. Read aloud a good book for visualizing, again without showing the pictures. Allow the student to periodically stop and draw or jot key words describing what they see, hear, smell, and feel (taste is a less common, but equally important sense used for mental images – feel free to include it if it fits with the book).

3. While reading aloud a text, again without showing the pictures, periodically stop and allow students to draw the scene they visualize on a section of a sentence strip. Stop strategically at places where the setting or characters or actions have changed. Students should end up with a “comic strip” by the end of the text. After students seem comfortable with this strategy, begin allowing them to create these comic strips with texts or passages they read independently.

4. Practice these same techniques with nonfiction texts as well. When reading nonfiction texts readers don’t always have a “movie” in their heads, but they do form pictures that create a sort of “slide show” based on the facts they read. Encourage kids to orally discuss and draw these “slides” with nonfiction texts.

For students who struggle with the strategies above, it may help to practice visualizing at the word level, then the phrase level, and then the sentence level. For instance, have the student draw what they think a clown looks like. Then have them close their eyes and try to see that picture in their heads. Prompt them to describe the object’s size, color, shape, if it’s moving, where it is, and any sounds they hear. Do the same for several words. Then try introducing a descriptive phrase, such as “the mall at Christmas time”. Have them draw and visualize this phrase. Once they seem successful, they can begin visualizing descriptive sentences, and then move on to some of the strategies above. (This strategy is from “Visualizing and Verbalizing” by Nanci Bell)

|Skill- Comprehension: Details |

|Intervention – Identifying Details |

|Source or adapted from - “Improving Reading: Strategies and Resources” by Jerry L. Johns and Susan Davis Lenski |

Materials:

chart paper or board

passages

Instructions for administration:

1. List several different topics on the board (for example, birds, animals, airplanes, or colors). Select one that seems to interest most of the students.

2. Write the topic on the board and have students share information they know about the topic. As students share, write sentences containing their thoughts. An example follows:

Airplanes

Airplanes can fly.

Pilots fly airplanes.

There are many different kinds of airplanes.

Airplanes can carry people.

3. Tell students that you will ask them questions that can be answered by understanding the sentences. For example, “What can airplanes carry?” As the questions are answered, have students indicate which sentence provided the answer to the question. If students give correct answers that are not contained in the sentences, acknowledge the response as correct. Then ask students to find the answer that is given in a sentence that is written on the board.

4. After several similar exercises, tell students they are learning how to answer questions that ask them to locate facts and details.

5. Develop another topic with sentences and encourage students to ask questions that other students who read the sentences can answer. Discuss various answers as appropriate.

6. Indicate that such questions can also be asked about the information and ideas contained in their reading. Share a brief passage from a literature selection or content textbook and ask factual questions. Use a procedure similar to the one already described.

|Skill- Comprehension: Details |

|Intervention – 4 Ws |

|Source or adapted from - “Improving Reading: Strategies and Resources” by Jerry L. Johns and Susan Davis Lenski |

Materials:

chart paper or board

concrete objects

small box

Instructions for administration:

1. Write a sentence on the board. Have students read it silently and then have someone read it out loud.

Early that morning, Brittany packed her lunch in the kitchen.

2. Tell students to use the information in the sentence to answer the questions you ask. Ask several questions (who, what, when, where) and remind students to use the information in the sentence for their answers. Tell students that the questions are checking the students’ ability to identify facts and details. Remind students to ask who, what, when, and where as they read.

3. Continue this procedure with another sentence and then move to several sentences and brief passages. Encourage discussion and think aloud as necessary.

4. Use concrete objects and have students demonstrate the meaning of a sentence. For example, use several plastic animals and a small box. Have students read a sentence and manipulate or arrange objects that answer the question. Sample ideas are provided below:

Sentence: The cat and dog are near the box.

Question: Where are the cat and dog? (show me)

Sentence: The horse is near the box and the cat is in the box.

Question: Where are the cat and the horse? (show me)

|Skill- Comprehension: Details |

|Intervention – Key Word Strategy |

|Source or adapted from - “Snapshots” by Linda Hoyt |

Materials:

reading passage or story

paper, pencil

Instructions for administration:

1. Have the student read a story.

2. Reread the story with the goal of trying to select a few key words that seem especially important to the story. Make a list of these words. Be selective. You want the MOST IMPORTANT words.

3. Have the student cut their list of words apart so that each word can be moved separately.

4. Ask the student to arrange the words in a way that supports the student as they retell the story (for example, for Cinderella “fireplace” and “cinders” would probably come before “pumpkin”).

5. Have the student orally retell the story using the word list. As the student becomes more proficient, you might try asking them to do a written summary using the key words.

|Skill- Comprehension: Details |

|Intervention – “Get the Facts” game |

|Source or adapted from - “Improving Reading: Strategies and Resources” by Jerry L. Johns and Susan Davis Lenski |

Materials:

book of facts

note cards

Instructions for administration:

1. Use a world almanac or Guinness Book of World Records or another source to develop a series of sentences or short passages. Put this information on the front of a note card and put one question (with the answer) on the back of the card. Place the cards sentence-side up in front of the students.

2. After one student reads the sentence silently, the card is given to another student who reads the question.

3. If it is answered correctly, the student who answered the question gets the card. Incorrectly answered questions are placed at the bottom of the pile. The correct answer should not be revealed.

4. Questions can be developed around various themes: sports, people, movies, silly facts, cars, TV shows, etc. A possible list of sentences and questions is below:

Sentences Questions

|Green-yellow is the safest color for a car. |What is the safest color for a car? |

|The hair and skin that is seen on your body is dead. |What is dead? |

|A mole can tunnel through nearly 300 feet of earth a day. |How far can a mole tunnel each day? |

|The eyes of a giant squid are as large as a basketball. |How large are a giant squid’s eyes? |

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